Someone Please Let Werner Herzog Film in Space!

Werner Herzog may just be the most interesting man in the world: he’s moved a 340-ton steamboat over a mountain, (allegedly) directed Klaus Kinski at gun point, eaten his own shoe, and saved Joaquin Phoenix’s life. Then there are his films: brilliant, bizarre, startling, terrifying, always confusing. As Michael Hogan mentioned previously, we had the great fortune of catching the world premiere of Herzog’s 3-D documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a mere 15 hours after it was completed (according to Herzog, who was in the audience). After a team of cave explorers discovered the Chauvet Caves in France, which contain cave paintings that are the oldest known works of art, the French government sealed off the caves to protect them. Only a select group of scientists had been allowed in at restricted times to study the caves, until Herzog convinced the French to let him film them by making him an employee of the state at a rate of one Euro. The resulting film is breathtaking and enchanting, eliciting a kind of quasi-religious experience much like Herzog’s previous documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World. IFC picked it up for distribution, so you can catch it Stateside in 2011. We caught up with Herzog in the green room after the premiere, where the giddily exhausted filmmaking legend shared with us his paradoxical skepticism about 3-D, his enchantment with the caves, and yes, what the deal is with the albino alligators at the end.John Lopez: The last sentence I ever expected to hear was “let’s go see the 3-D Werner Herzog film.” Yet, here it is, and it’s fantastic. At what point did you know you had to shoot this in 3-D?

Werner Herzog: I’m a skeptic of 3-D because we are uncomfortable in our lives seeing full 3-D all the time. We have one dominant eye and one peripheral eye. Our brain is very selective. Ultimately, we are not very comfortable seeing full 3-D, but in the cinema you cannot escape. Your brain cannot be selective anymore. However, it became clear the moment I saw the cave that there was a certain drama to the configuration of the cave—the niches and bulges and the dynamic of the wall—which was understood by early Paleolithic people, 32,000 years ago. The way they used the Cave is totally remarkable and I said to myself, it is imperative that this film be in 3-D because it may be the only film which ever was allowed to be filmed in there.

How did you go about working in 3-D?

I immediately talked with Peter Zeitlinger, the cinematographer. When things became really tough, we brought in Kaspar Kallas, a man from Estonia who is an absolute computer and software genius, but he also builds the hardware. He would build the cameras with the two cinematographers—even inside the cave. We had fairly complex structures to make, starting from a steel plate with holes and steel rods that we would use to align the lenses.

Yes, you said in the Q&A after the film that you had to constantly reconfigure the cameras in the cave to get the shots you wanted?

Yes, because we couldn’t move outside [for lack of time]. But we tried to be economical with our time and our means. We did not switch the focal length or the distance to our objects every five minutes.

The film, with the 3-D and music, creates a very intense feeling of a mysticism for the viewer. Is that what it was like being in those caves and see the earliest pieces of human art?

It was always complete wonder and enchantment. It’s the kind of wonder I had when I saw cave paintings at age 12 in a book that I desperately wanted to buy but didn’t have the money. So this incredible awe is still in me and it was dormant for a long, long time. When finally I had the opportunity to go and do the film, there was no moment of persuasion needed. In the film, one of the scientists asked for silence because when you really keep silent, you hear your own heartbeat, it is so still. I wanted to bring this across and the moment in the film when he says it was actually staged. But we did discuss it, and he said listen, listen, listen, and you can really hear your own heartbeat. It is so still, so silent.

You’re known as the filmmaker who will go to the ends of the earth, where others won’t or can’t—the deepest Amazon, under the Antarctic ice sheets, and now caves frozen in time 30,000 years ago. Where else on earth can you take your camera?

Well, I was only in France. It’s nothing special. I have a project about death row inmates that I started filming already and a couple of other projects. I don’t have to go to an even deeper and silent cave. I would like to be in a space shuttle, but other people will do that because I have to be younger for that. They wouldn’t allow me because, for example, I think you have to have a full set of teeth, and some of my teeth were knocked in violently once. It’s for much younger people.

Would you do another 3-D film?

No, not that I have a plan, but in this case it was imperative. It’s fine to see a film, let’s say once a year, like fireworks on the 4th of July, and that’s what Avatar was. So fine, yes, why not. But again, we are not really comfortable seeing 3-D movies, and we will hopefully never see a romantic comedy in 3-D because 3-D forces you to accept a certain dimensionality of things. It doesn’t really allow fantasies to go wild and float away from the film and imagine, “Will the two lovers finally make it together?”

We have to ask about the albino crocodiles [sic, alligators] you show in the epilogue. What is it about these creatures that fascinates you, and why did you include them in the film?

Well, it was a sheer coincidence that I stumbled across these mutant albino crocodiles [sic, alligators], warmed by radioactivity. I found them so stunning that I decided they had to be in the film because I knew the greenhouses that were warmed by a surplus of a warm water from the [nuclear] cooling systems would spread. Fairly soon, maybe in a few thousand years, this climate will reach the cave, which is only 20 miles away as the crow flies. What will these albino crocodiles see when they see the paintings? What will they make of it? Today, we are the albino crocodiles, looking at the painting. We can only be awestruck, but we can never understand why they were painted, by whom they were painted, and so they mystery will linger.

Well, as an artist yourself, looking at works created over 30,000 years ago, did you feel any kinship with whoever these people were?

I would be cautious about it, but when you listen and hear your own heartbeat for a moment, there is doubt: is it their heartbeat or is it mine? The commentary says it once. What happened to some of the scientists in their report about it, and what happened to the first discoverers in their first moments inside the cave—they felt eyes upon them and [that they were] being observed, being looked at from the dark. So, a very mysterious sort of communication, which I never felt, with the only exception of listening to my own heartbeat. Suddenly, I felt this is not my heartbeat, this is their heartbeat, and I can hear it.